The Wild (3 page)

If you listened when the wind blew through its hair, you could hear the rustling of the whole forest. It came soundlessly out of its cage, drifting between the bars like fog. Bob didn't have to wait for instructions, he was familiar enough with the logic of dreams to start running at once.

Inwardly he was calm. He knew that this was a dream. He was not running through Central Park being chased by a breeze that had become a wolf. He was in bed.

The trees swept past him, their great trunks dimly lit by the antique pathside lamps. As he ran he found that he was moving along just above the surface of the path, almost as if he was about to fly like the wolf of his childhood dream.

There was nothing behind him now, nothing but the long expanse of the Literary Walk, so elegant at night, as if waiting for the return of the civilization that had created it. It was a windy night and the trees sighed and tossed their heads. No voice sounded, no radio blared. The park was empty.

The fear had left the dream, to be replaced by a sense of wonder. He had never been in the park in the middle of the night. Being here now filled him with sweet unease. Anybody he met would be dangerous, and yet it was also dark and he could hide. He could be the wraith in the shadows, the one who stalked the midnight lovers, the predator. He could be the one they all feared, the one who kept the park empty at this hour.

He slowed down. The wolf was gone. The dream became a stroll between dark pillars of trees. One part of him was searching for symbols; he sought the sense of his dream. Its landscape seemed connected to some obscure inner resurrection.

The wolf burst upon him, its paws outstretched, its teeth bared, its eyes dark beneath the hood of its brows. He fell back, hands out, kicking, pushing, and was swept along as if in water. He tumbled between the trunks of two trees. Then he gathered himself up, feeling the wolf right at his heels. Somewhere in his mind the voice of Walter Cronkite explained that wolves are shy and do not generally harm human beings. But the voice did not connect with the empirical reality. He tried to run but now he could not. He blew instead as a detached leaf blows, soaring past the crowns of the trees, high into the sky. Around the park the buildings glimmered, a wall of gleaming fortresses. Below and behind him the wolf rose amid flashes, as if its claws sparked against the air.

The higher he flew, the harder it got to continue. Finally he felt himself begin to fall. He did not fall fast—in fact he could control it enough to avoid trees. The wolf, though, had not lost control of itself at all. Its whole attention was fixed on Bob, who lusted to reach the ground where he could run again. But he fell as softly as a bit of thread on the whipping air. Growing increasingly desperate, he kicked like a swimmer. He felt the breath of the wolf on his back, heard its urgent little cries as it closed the distance between them.

Then his feet touched the ground. He was in the Sheep Meadow, running as fast as he could. A woman was running beside him, Cindy, calling to him in a shrill voice. He could not quite hear her, but he had the impression that if he could, her words would help.

The wolf snapped. A flash of white shot through Bob's brain and he tripped, falling head over heels in the rich grass. Then the wolf was upon him. Its claws melted his flesh with a puff of blue smoke and a hiss.

Then the jaws opened, and began to work the flesh off his bones. He became a mass of conscious agony. He could see the red, pulsating walls of the wolf's esophagus, could feel the sizzling acid of its stomach. He commenced a grim kneading suffocation. Then he began to dissolve. He became softer and softer until he seeped through the walls of the wolf's organs and began to race through its body, his blood screaming in its hot, quiet blood. He was the living victim of the night, sacrificed to the life of another.

Then he was seeing through the wolf's eyes, hearing the great rustling, banging, honking, shouting, roaring city all around, and smelling waves of odors that were like bridges of leaves and memories, the smell of dark, sick gardens, and most of all the smell of people and metal bars.

He was moving through the night in the body of the wolf when Cindy came into the center of his dream, her face streaked with tears, her hands on his wolf head, her voice begging, and this time the words made sense.

"Oh, God, honey, please wake up!"

By degrees, he obeyed the words. His wolf body fell away, smells turned back into sights, then the whole park seemed to melt. The trees flowed down like great candles, the grass shriveled into a pale Canon sheet, the cliffs of buildings became a cliff of pillows. Cynthia sat with his head cradled in her lap. He could smell sweat, his and hers. The bedroom light shone softly in his eyes.

"Cindy?"

"Thank God! Honey, it's all right. It's me. You're all right."

He grunted; his throat was so sore he could barely talk. "I'm sorry," was all he managed to say. There was terror in her eyes. He reached up, caressed her face, feeling her warm, tear-wet cheek.

"I couldn't wake you up!"

"I'm sorry. Truly, Cindy. I wanted to wake up, believe me I did."

He got up and on wobbly legs went into the bathroom. When he drank he felt a thirst like fire and drank more. Again and again he drank. Finally, gasping, he leaned over the sink and splashed his face with more water. He coughed. Cindy came in and put her arm around him.

The thing was, he could still feel himself inside the wolf. Somewhere in the night they were running together. Maybe they would always be together, running like this, running for the end of the universe.

Cindy turned him around and enfolded him in her arms. He kissed her, and her response was hungry at first. Then she sighed. She caressed him, a sad, almost apologetic gesture. "It's three o'clock in the morning," she said. "Let's try and get some sleep."

Chapter Two

S
OME YEARS BEFORE,
R
OBERT AND
C
INDY
D
UKE HAD
tried to vacation on an island in the Carribbean. It was a beautiful island, its interior lush with waterfalls and orchids, its beaches chalk white, its -lagoons as clear as air and swarming with colorful fish.

The only difficulty with this island was and is that the best beach is located at the end of the airport's one runway. The Dukes had just gotten to the island that morning, and having no time to discover its smaller hidden beaches—the pockets of sand secreted along its rocky harbors and lagoons—they were at this beach.

Bob watched an airliner bank over the ocean, then aim for the airport. Fortunately the planes today were landing from the west, so all the beach had to endure was a roar and a blast of sweet, warm fumes when one came to the end of the runway and turned around. Otherwise they would be thundering overhead at an altitude of fifty feet.

Dropping, the airliner disappeared below the edge of the dunes. A few moments passed. Bob. heard a much louder roar than he had on previous landings. Then there was a dull thud and a cracking sound. Then silence, but for the bouncing of an enormous wheel, which bounded down the dunes, across the beach and splashed into the sea. People sat or stood, all turning toward the dunes, all freezing when they saw the nose of the airplane sitting there like a sculpture, not two hundred feet away. Bob was locked in a kind of silence. Two men in blue uniforms clambered out of the top of the plane and Jumped down, disappearing among the dunes.

Bob began to run. When he reached the top of the dunes, he found himself overlooking a scene of astonishing destruction. A huge jetliner lay in at least four pieces, festooned with wires and smoking tubes. Jet fuel poured out of half a dozen places, making foaming pools in the sand beneath the shattered plane. A man and a woman jumped off one of the sections of the plane and, arm in arm, began making their way back toward the airport. The pilots climbed up into another section, the main section, and started shouting into the jumble of detached seats and people.

There was a soft rush of sound as the jet fuel under one section ignited. Bob could see the people inside struggling frantically,, then they were obscured by thick, black smoke. The two pilots had begun dropping people out of the main section. Bob ran over and began leading them away from the plane. There were terrible screams coming from the burning part of the plane. A burning woman leaped out of the smoke and began to dance, her arms flailing as she slapped at herself with her flaming purse.

Then the main section of the plane caught. The fire was for the moment confined to the rear. People kept jumping out of the front. The pilots and a stewardess could be heard inside, shrieking at them to hurry up.

Fire burst into the cabin from a thousand different directions, swirling in a vortex. One of the pilots rushed forward, leaped down, and ran away, his face black, his hair smoking. The other one could be seen in the fire, throwing seats, pushing people toward the gaping hole at the front.

Bob sat in his seat in the plane to Atlanta, reliving as he always did that afternoon on the Island of Escape. The Island of Dreams. Pina colada, limbo, snorkel. The Island of Coral Bedrooms.

"Will you be having dinner with us, sir?"

He nodded.

"Steak or chicken?"

Always the same two meals.

"I'll have the duck a l'orange and a half bottle of Chablis. Maybe the saffron souffle for dessert."

"That sounds like the chicken."

"It's the chicken."

The flight attendant made a note on her little list and went away. This year he had earned over a hundred thousand miles on Delta. Soon he'd be able to cash his mileage in for a free trip somewhere. Maybe the Caribbees, maybe hell.

For once he wasn't lugging along boxes and boxes of seminar materials. Instead it was simply a matter of coming, listening, and going home again. The Apple Computer people were the ones with the boxes of junk.

He tried to let his mind drift. Last night's nightmare was still close to the surface, though, and when he drifted, he at once smelled its fearful scents: wolf breath, wet grass, and his own blood. The dream wasn't really over, that was the trouble. Cindy shouldn't have waked him up, as terrifying as it must have been to see him toward the end howling and snapping. She should have let the dream resolve. Now it persisted in him, lingering at the edge of memory, jumping for a split second into his vision.

To quell it he forced his attention to the face of his watch. Nine P.M. She would just be turning off
Masterpiece Theatre
and probably fixing herself a cup of herb tea. Kevin would be asleep, the cats at the foot of his bed. When Cindy lay down they would come to her, their habit being to share the society of sleep between the two beds in the household. He wished that she was sitting in the seat beside him, Kevin in the window seat.

If the plane was going to crash, though, better he be alone.

When Kevin had been a baby. Bob had taken great pains to preserve his own life. He did not want to leave such a vulnerable little creature. When there was someone in the world whose eyes literally shone when they regarded you, how could you bear to die? Kevin had needed a male image, had adored Bob in a way he had not known was possible, had so relished his every attention. But now Kevin was twelve, and he could grow up without a father, if necessary. Or Cindy could remarry. Bob could be replaced.

While these morbid thoughts passed through his mind, the stewardess dropped his meal on his tray. He nibbled at the chicken breast, ate the parsley, ate the half of a cherry tomato that was on the salad. He drank the club soda and ate a bite of the dense brownie. He had brought Max Brod's book about Kafka. If he was going to keep up with his son, he was going to have to gain some sort of insight into Kafka. What were the parables about? And the "Penal Colony"—or, for God's sake, the
Metamorphosis?
This morning, while Bob was looking through the Amusement Section of the
Times
for notices about ballroom dancing, Kevin had suddenly asked, "Where's Away From Here? Is it away from here, or away from where Kafka was when he wrote the parable?" He had seen the mirth in his son's eyes, and decided that he had to learn more about Kafka.

He just stared at the pages, though. Half of his mind was waiting for the plane to fall out of the sky, waiting for the dreadful roar that would announce the explosion of a terrorist bomb, or the thuttering oscillations that would precede the separation of a wing.

Why should I read about Kafka? I'm living in Kafka. I'm a Hunger Artist on trial in the Penal Colony. There isn't any escape. Even death is no escape, not if there is reincarnation. Oh, God, what if I come back in Bangladesh or as a Shiite fanatic, or a Chinese peasant? What's going on, how does it all work, why do I keep thinking I've lost my keys when I haven't?

I'm in the middle of the woods and I suddenly realize that I can't get out. The wolf is no help, the wolf is only chasing me deeper.

A cold hand covers mine. A face, rusty around the edges, skin as tight as that of a mummy, hair too blond, voice older than the polished nails, the pearl-hard face-lift. "Jesus will comfort you," says the mask.

Bob realized that he had been crying, his tears raining down on the chicken and Max Brod.

"Jesus—"

"Pray with me. It'll help."

"I don't go to church." He thought: O'Reilly. Cigar. Communion. Then: Altar Society, mother picking up the lilies at Anne Warner's house. Benediction, Mass, the Last Sacraments.

"It doesn't matter whether you believe or not. Jesus doesn't mind."

Where was Father O'Reilly now? The Oblate Seminary, perhaps, teaching the dwindling few seminarians their truth and calling: "Don't drink after midnight or before five o'clock in the mom-ing. Beware of female converts, they are all after your tail. Remember that most questions cannot be answered. Remember that most sins cannot be understood. Nuns expect terrible penances. That is what their lives are about. The church is dying, this is the key truth of our time. Trust in God. Judging from the amount of notice He takes of us, He isn't too concerned. Follow His example, He has perfect knowledge."

All things grow old. The girls of spring get face-lifts. Bob wondered how much skin the lady beside him had lost over the years, how much experience she had hidden in her waxed looks. Where was the skin? Incinerated, or lying in a bottle of formaldehyde in some plastic surgeon's private museum? What would he have there— removed scars pinned to cards like butterflies, septums, big lips, bits of eye sockets and breasts? And, floating in formaldehyde, the discarded cheeks, jowls, and chins of his best customers?

"Pray with me. You might find it helpful."

Her intrusion made him feel mean. "Play?"

"No, pray!"

"You said play."

"Well, hardly that. Play—I mean, oh dear,
pray
with me."

"Freudian slip. I don't remember any prayers except the Hail Mary."

"I don't believe in Freud. He knew nothing of Jesus. What is the Hail Mary? I don't know that prayer."

"Moslem."

"Oh."

She began leafing through the Airline Gift Guide. If you fill out the card—say, order a friend some golf shoes with retractable cleats—and the plane crashes and they find the card, do they mail it for you and take the charge out of your estate? Is there an airline policy covering this matter?

Until the island Bob had always assumed that people were just pulverized in jet crashes. But they had all been alive, broken arms and legs no doubt in the twisted jumble of seats, but alive. Twelve got out.

He imagined being twisted practically in two, the seat on top of him, his face against the floor, and the floor getting hotter and hotter and he cannot get free.

"Please fasten your seat belts, ladies and gentlemen. Captain Gamer has begun our final approach into Atlanta's Hartsfield International Airport."

The flight attendant hurried along collecting the last of the meal trays and plastic cups. The landing was completely normal. Bob moved past the smiling crew members and out into Hartsfield's silly vastness without any difficulties. Maybe he only imagined that his life was running out. Perhaps this was an illusion, there to mask the far more horrible reality that he was going to live a long, long, long time.

My problem is, I'm in a panic state. I'm panicked about death. Over death. Death and going broke. At the moment I have no accounts receivable. I've got to drum up some new business. Dying and going broke are similar, except death is less embarrassing. He hurried along a moving sidewalk. But what do I do? How do I drum up business if I'm not sure what it is I do?

Maybe the Apple people would have some i-deas. Maybe he ought to start advocating the Macintosh Office after all. A point of difference. "Spend your money with me. I advocate the Macintosh Office."

"Excuse me?"

"Nothing." The man beside him had responded to his thoughts, not because he could read minds but because he had obviously spoken out loud. All right, so you pass age forty and you start talking to yourself.

Nose, ears, and penis all continue to grow, even as your overall body mass starts to decline. Short-term memory is going. And now you mutter.

Silently, over the past year, Bob had begun to engage in the battle of the nose hair. You couldn't very well just leave it to grow longer and longer, curly and gray, like smoke flowing out your nostrils. You had to cut it. Bob used nail clippers, and the process made him sneeze. The more he cut it, the stiffer the hair became. Maybe he was one of those unlucky men whose beards grew inside their noses.

He would have drunk, but he had swallowed so many gallons of alcohol in his youth that he was almost unable to stimulate himself. He didn't smoke, drink, or chew gum.

He was nostalgic for the time in London he had been given some brownies laced with hash by a lush daughter of the nobility—possibly the only lush noble daughter—and had wound up writing a seventy-page epic poem about the death of Nebuchadnezzar.

This part of any trip was the worst, the cab ride from the airport to the hotel. You were alone and you were angry and you were bored. Stone bored watching the passing exit signs, the cars, a Camaro driven by a blonde so enormous she might be a depilated man. Maybe she was. What would
that
be like? A violation, thrilling ... or depressing, a sexless struggle with someone too strong to escape.

The dull, steamy thoughts of the traveler. Already 10:35. Get checked in, for God's sake, you can't call Cindy after eleven. That's the rule, that way you don't inconvenience anybody. Too bad he couldn't afford a portable phone.

The cab hurtled around a corner and he finally accepted the feeling that the world was ending, or rather, he was ending. "It felt like I died and the whole world died with me," a man had once said upon awakening from a particularly severe auto accident.

"May I take your bag, sir?"

God, I wish you would! "No, that's all right."

Check in: the people ahead have no reservations. Then they have a credit card on the Bank of Pakistan. They speak little English. Bob would carry them on his back to their room if it would hurry things up. The lobby smells faintly of cigarette smoke and food. Liquor. Steak. Later, he'll come down to the bar with all the other lonely men and sit staring around, looking for the Woman Who Is Not There.

He's being processed now. Credit card. Guest of Apple. Oh, that'll be the fourth floor. She says it like it's the bomb shelter. Go right up, you're already checked in, Mr. Drake.

Duke.

Okay.

Fourth floor: a woman of twenty in a tan suit with the Apple logo on her pocket comes forward. "May I take your bag, Mr. Drake?"

"Duke. No thanks."

"Let's see, you're in 403. Lucky you, you'll have a view down Peachtree Street."

Oh, how wonderful! What luck!

The room is very nicely packaged. Little soaps and creams and things, and a shoeshine rag that doesn't quite work, the bed turned down with a mint on the pillow. A bowl of apples and a lot of literature. A Macintosh on the desk to play with. Very posh. Apple wants to win.